Dozens treated after teen's death from meningitis

Published 5:30 am, Monday, May 31, 2004

FORT WORTH (AP) -- Health officials have treated up to 30 people who came in contact with a North Texas teenager who died of a meningitis-related blood infection.

Sean Nugent died Thursday after apparently contracting meningococcemia, a rare and overwhelming infection that caused his body to go into shock, said Dr. Alex Hathaway, Tarrant County's public health authority.

The health department contacted the 15-year-old Keller High School student's classmates, friends and family on Friday, and 25 to 30 of them took medication over the weekend to ward off the infection, epidemiologist Dr. Bobby Jones told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram for a Monday story.

People who have spent several hours in close contact with someone who has the infection are at risk of getting sick, Hathaway said, but very few people will develop such a serious illness.

"We don't know why a handful of people will get what this young boy had or the way he developed the disease," she said. "It is theorized ... that there's something missing in their immune system. The average healthy immune system is able to mount a response to it."

The infection, caused by the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis, cannot be contracted by passing someone on the street or using the same toilet. But health officials still warned people to be aware of any changes in their health.

"Everyone is at risk. But only a handful of people -- a very, very small percentage -- will become this ill," Hathaway said.

Up to 25 percent of the population are carriers for Neisseria meningitidis, which also is one of the leading causes of bacterial meningitis, Jones said. That means they may spread the bacterium but rarely will get sick from it.

About 20 people come down with the infection each year in Tarrant County, but very few die from it, he added. The county usually reports one to two meningitis deaths a year, though no one died from it last year.

Because Keller High School officials didn't learn of Nugent's death until Friday morning, they could not send a letter home to parents, district spokesman Jason Meyer said. The last day of school was Thursday.